


the route of the problem

by sockpoppet



Category: Spies Are Forever - Talkfine/Tin Can Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Blood, Cliffhanger Oneshot, Fighting & Talking, Guns, Knives, Lovers To Enemies, M/M, Mild Gore, Past Relationship(s), Remnants of Intimacy, Very Post-Banana, Villainy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25478581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sockpoppet/pseuds/sockpoppet
Summary: Circumstance stays Curt Mega’s hand at the end of the second act. Now Owen Carvour is alive and Curt has to figure out what to do about it.
Relationships: Owen Carvour/Agent Curt Mega
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37





	the route of the problem

Curt’s insides ice over. Click? Click, and not perhaps _bang_? Owen raises an eyebrow. His nose and mouth are blocked by the barrel of Curt’s gun, but the bright moonlight highlights the smudge along his jaw where Curt popped him a good one on the roof.

There’s a fraught silence.

“Having trouble getting it up, old boy?”

Curt, without taking his eyes off Owen, checks his gun’s chamber with a mixture of hope and dread. No more bullets.

Owen’s hand drifts to his side; Curt flips the gun and hits him. The blow to the face staggers Owen into the railing. Curt swaps the gun for his knife, grabs Owen’s jacket collar, and holds the blade to his neck.

“On your knees. Hands up.”

Owen sardonically raises his hands, slowly. He nods his head to the side and indicates the stairs, wearing a predator’s smile above the silver of the knife. “Might have some trouble there.” Blood traces a line down the side of his face from the swelling cut on his cheekbone.

Curt bares his teeth and walks them backwards until they’re both on the landing. Owen sinks down easy, tipping his head up and his lids down to smirk up at Curt. His hair is disarrayed from the scuff. Curt easily resists the urge to brush it back into place.

“What are you going to do with me now?” Owen asks.

“Link your fingers and put your hands behind your head.”

Owen does it. “For someone who was resolved to ‘move on’ a moment ago, you seem to be taking a lot of trouble to not stab me.”

“Turn around.”

“Enjoying the power play?”

“Shut up.”

Owen shuffles around on his knees. The jacket slides through Curt’s fingers. He adjusts his grip on the knife, curling his wrist around the side of Owen’s neck and tucking the point into the hollow where Owen’s jaw meets his ear. Owen’s pulse is fast. It matches his own.

“Well this is familiar,” Owen remarks absently.

“On your stomach.”

“Those days are long gone, Mega,” Owen says. Curt can’t see his face.

But he does that too, moving carefully, both of them conscious of the knife. And then he’s down, the whole lean length of him stretched out on the gridded metal of the catwalk. He’s still heartbreakingly tall, dark, and dangerous. He looks—

“So now what?”

Curt startles, nicking Owen. It bleeds immediately, joining the earlier trickle that’s made its way down to smear over his collarbone and the edge of his mustard shirt.

“Ah, it’s to be the death by a thousand cuts? You might want to get a move on then, it’s a good bit but it takes bloody ages.”

“No,” Curt says, still pissed. “I’m still deciding.”

Curt puts his knee between Owen’s shoulder blades and nudges the tip of the knife past Owen’s skin to nestle between the bones of his spine. The blood from the third cut wells slowly. Owen is still.

Curt pats him down, finds a pen, a comb, the deed, and a few Prussian-Sloviskian crowns. He confiscates all of it, shoving everything in his pockets one-handed.

The pant-leg high on Owen’s right thigh has friction marks from the hunting knife he wore, but it’s missing now. He didn’t have the machete in the council chamber.

Curt flips Owen’s jacket up to bare the mustard expanse of his back. The shoulder holsters are empty.

“Where’s your other gun?”

“I only had the one, love. And that’s somewhere—” he points with a flap of his elbow “—down there.”

Curt focuses on thinking, keeping the knife angled right, keeping one eye on Owen and the other out for Owen’s piece, and not passing out. His gunshot wound has not approved of the hang gliders, the speedboat, _or_ the motorcycles. It’s been a hard couple days. He would kill for a drink.

“So what’s the plan here, Curt, hold me at knifepoint until your friends show up? Which will be when, exactly?”

Curt stretches painfully, checks both Owen’s ankles for hidden weapons, finds nothing.

“You said your team is at the island facility... knowing Miss Barb, the one in the Pacific. So that’s...” He does the math and whistles. “Hours and hours away. Do you even have a tracker? A comm?”

Curt stares stonily at the back of his head.

“The great Curt Mega, ladies and gentlemen. Same as ever,” Owen mocks.

Curt takes a determined breath. “I’m going to take you into custody, and you’re going to tell the Agency everything you know about Chimera so we can stop it.”

Owen laughs. Curt is tempted to cut him again.

“Oh god, Mega, you utter moron,” he says lightly, crisp with annoyance. “What do you think is going to happen exactly, you’ll tie me up, put me on a plane to Maryland, a spot of torture makes me spill all and then everything is goddamned hunky-dory, let’s go for a pint? I _know_ torture, Agent. I’ve been living it for four years. It’s an art, and you’re no artist. The only thing you’ll get from me is whatever you can glean from my cold, dead corpse when the wet boys are done with me.”

“Nice speech,” Curt says flatly. “You’re stalling.”

“So are you.”

Quiet for a moment, but Owen never met a silence he didn’t like.

“You dropped it in the ocean, didn’t you. Or... no, you simply left it behind again. On the nightstand, I imagine. Rookie move, agent.”

Curt swallows. He considers the pressure it would take to sever Owen’s spinal column. If he moves the knife down a few notches, Owen wouldn’t even die. Paralyzed, he’d be easy to transport.

“The things you’ve done, Owen,” he says, turning it over, “they’re despicable.”

Owen slumps, sighs boredly. “Are they?”

“How difficult is it to get a person into small enough pieces for a carry-on?”

“Oh, not too bad,” Owen says, getting comfortable on the grating. “Just the legs and head, really. The rest fits quite well... off-the-rack, you might say.”

“That’s horrific.”

“What kind of spy are you? Life is horrific.”

“So it’s soft to think dismembering people is fucked up? How did you get like this?”

“Don’t clutch your pearls at me now, Mega. You know how.” Owen’s fingers tense. “Friends in low places, I suppose.”

This whole thing, the political coup, the miraculous resurrection, burning his professional bridges, all of the past two weeks even is just... frustrating. The blame, especially. Curt’s not the only guilty party here.

He wishes it were Tatiana here instead of him. Or better yet, with him. Then they could fight evil together, as a team, instead of Curt having to grapple with the crippled foundation of his past staring him resentfully in the face.

“What friends?” he asks, for lack of a better question. He’s already got the ‘why’.

Owen doesn’t answer. Curt jabs him with the knife.

“We’re stuck here. You wouldn’t shut up before, you might as well say.”

Silence.

“Hey!” Curt snaps, punching him in the kidney. Owen doesn’t flinch. “If you want me to torture you, I will. Just like old times, right?”

He waits.

“Oh, ignore me, real mature.”

Something builds inside him, four years of it. Everyone in the room hates Curt Mega, and maybe it’s even fair, but he’s been marinating in this since 1957.

It bursts:

“I didn’t mean to hurt you!”

Nothing.

“I thought you were dead.”

Still no response. Curt gazes at the back of Owen’s head, the dark hair that’s fallen to cover his eye.

“Losing you—”

Owen scoffs.

Curt bites his tongue and waits, trying to suppress the quiver in his throat.

Owen laughs again. A desolate chuckle this time, graveside-serious, not the mocking pleasantry of before.

“You didn’t lose me, Mega. You threw me away like that fucking banana skin. And now you’re not even man enough to finish the job. In the words of some second-class agent: why don’t you just kill me already?”

“No. I’m taking you back so we can stop this machine-network-thing.”

“If this is your misaimed idea of mercy, it’s too little and far too late.”

“Maybe reparations are the punishment you deserve.”

“At least do it yourself this time, instead of running like a coward.”

“Why do you keep-? I’m not going to kill you, I said!”

“Aren’t you? Had your fill already?”

“That’s not-!”

Owen tuts, rolls his head to eye Curt over his shoulder. The knife slides, cutting deeper, but Curt lets him look. “Show a little conviction, man. What was that business with the gun, foreplay? You pointed at my head and shot, that I’m still alive and enduring your dreck is a cruel twist of fate. Finish what you started.”

“You were the one who said it wouldn’t stop anything!”

“This situation is untenable! Unless you’re going to let me go?” He raises the visible eyebrow.

“As if!”

“Then just kill me and be done with it. It won’t be the first time you stab me in the back.”

“Where do you get off, anyway?” Curt asks hotly.

“Oh, you know... the bedroom, the shower, maybe a secret Nazi super-castle.”

“Ha. You keep acting like the victim, but who almost creamed his shorts torturing me last week? And all those girls you murdered? It’s sick. And that’s not even touching the Nazis! Seriously, what the hell.” Owen tenses beneath him.

“At least they served a purpose. Unlike you.”

“Uh, yeah, genocide!” Curt throws his hands up. “I mourned you, Owen! If you don’t believe anything else, believe that. But you’re not the man I thought.”

“That man _died_ ,” Owen spits, turning. Curt isn’t fast enough, the knife scrapes a line across Owen’s chest but doesn’t stop him from bowling Curt over onto the landing.

The fight is vicious, long familiar limbs surging against his own, the heat of Owen’s breath on his face.

Owen punches him in the missing tooth, grips Curt’s shoulder and digs a finger into the hole his bullet made. His right hand locks with Curt’s left and forces it down, the leverage of his body keeping Curt on his back. He grips Curt’s other wrist and bangs it against the edge of the landing, trying to get him to drop the knife.

Curt kicks him off, slashes out to get some distance.

They both come to their feet, panting.

Curt starts them off:

“You went rogue!”

“So did you!”

“You shot my friend!”

“You didn’t even try to save me! Cold, Mega, real cold.”

“You’ve hurt people."

“Oh, like you haven’t. That’s the job, dear!”

“You’ve killed eleven-hundred-and, uh, fifty-?”

“1153.”

“-people! Horribly! And tricked me, garrotted me, shot, beat, electrocuted-!” Curt counts on his fingers pointedly, waving them between them.

“Ah well, what’s a little torture between old friends.”

Lunge, parry, riposte. Exactly like the museum, except with less frustratingly analogue weaponry. Curt feels clumsy and out of practice just the same. Owen, of course, is a fencer.

“Limey prick.”

“Addict.”

“Traitor.”

“Git.”

“Get bent, lackey.”

“Reckless sod.”

“Motherfucker.”

“Only yours, bellend.”

Despite everything, he never thought he’d get to banter like this again. He notices he’s smiling at the same time Owen does.

His eyes drop, and Owen lunges, toppling them both in a rolling heap down the stairs. Curt almost stabs him accidentally.

Then they come to a stop at the base of the steps, Owen’s hands locked around his throat, and Curt stabs him on purpose.

Owen growls, eyes wild, and backhands him, pulls the knife out of his leg and whips it across the room. Curt’s head bounces off the concrete. He tries to get at Owen’s eyes, but Owen leans back and Curt only brushes his shoulders. Curt scrabbles at Owen’s buttons, his windbreaker, digs into Owen’s stab wound. Owen grimaces but doesn’t let up.

When Curt’s subdued, the grip loosens. Owen lifts a hand to brush his hair back into place, composing himself. Then he starts monologuing, like the villain he is, while Curt sucks air like a beached fish.

He watches Owen’s mouth move dazedly. Owen’s sense for dramatic upstaging is an impeccable pain in the ass. He really could’ve been an actor.

“You know the worst thing? It wasn’t the pain, or watching you run away. It wasn’t being trapped in the explosion. I don’t even blame you for the safety barricade. It was that moment, just after. I fell, I landed, it hurt, and then I looked up and you were _considering_. I watched you decide to leave me for dead, even though you knew I was still alive. It was excruciating. That’s what killed me, Mega. Not the rubble or the fire or the shattered bones or your carelessness. You, thinking, and deciding what I was worth to you.”

Curt gapes at him. Owen’s mouth twists bitterly.

“Not enough. Clearly.”

“Owen—” he gasps.

“Don’t.” Owen visibly musters himself, summons his fractured control. He wipes a hand over his mouth and jaw, swipes at the blood on his face with a thumb, leaning down on the other to keep Curt down.

“I didn’t think you’d do it,” Owen says. “Until you pulled the trigger I truly didn’t think you had the stones to kill me.” He leans in to whisper in Curt’s ear. “Turns out I was right.”

Curt turns his head. The scruff against his cheek is a sense-memory he could do without. And it tickles. Owen sits up a little to catch his eye.

“It’s different with a knife, isn’t it,” Owen says. “More intimate.”

“I’m starting to think you want me to kill you.”

Owen sneers. His chest heaves. He still smells the same.

“What do you want from me, Owen?” Curt would really like to know. “My death? My penance? Is this your revenge, or you moving on? You’re all over the place.”

“Oh, I’m just thrilled to be taking this trip down memory lane with you, Agent Mega,” Owen smiles with feral cheer. “Speaking of deja vu...” He casts a meaningful glance out across the concrete of the warehouse.

“You ran here, Owen, not me,” Curt rasps. “I just followed. One step ahead, right? Careful you don’t trip yourself.”

Owen’s face twists. He grabs the lapels of Curt’s leather jacket to drag him up off the ground.

“I. Hate. You. You gullible fool, I would rather one of us died, preferably you, than help you, or be near you, or reconcile or whatever the fuck you think can happen here. But let’s not repeat old mistakes, eh?” He winks. “When I kill someone, I make sure they die.”

Curt sets his feet and swings them around, his nails gouging Owen’s wrists, their shoes scraping on the concrete. Owen pulls back, heaving them a different way. They stumble together, dancing drunkenly around the room, neither of them breaking free.

Curt tries to get to Owen’s gun, but Owen resists the move, at an advantage in this purely physical brawl. He always had a wiry kind of strength to him, but the Deadliest Man Alive is something else. His arms bulge, biceps tightening the upper sleeves of his jacket as he drags them both away from the stairs and toward the bank of windows that line the outer wall.

They hit the wall broadside. Curt bounces Owen’s head off a dirty window, leaving smears on both. Owen kicks his knee out from under him. Curt drags them both lopsided when he sags, colliding painfully with the windowsill. It’s the most serious tug-of-war he’s ever had.

“There’s no story where we both walk out of here, Mega!” Owen cries, headbutting him. Curt reels, his nose spurting blood and blinding him briefly with pain.

Owen throws a punch at the window that opens gashes in his knuckles and a long, narrow break in the old glass.

“It’s not supposed to go like this,” Curt promises. “We were partners.”

“It’s over, Curt!” Owen rages, shakes him for emphasis. The wind whistles through the hole, chilling them both. Owen stares, whispers, “There’s nothing else to say.”

Then he shoves. Curt smacks into the glass, cracking it further. A few more blows and huge shards are falling out to shatter on the ground far below.

Owen gets Curt leaned out through the broken window, hanging from Owen’s hands. He’s slick with blood and sweat. The Russian night is cool against his back.

“I feel a sharp pane in my side,” Curt says, light-headed.

“Let me fix that for you,” Owen replies, and pushes him out further.

“Ah, m'ch better,” he slurs.

“It’s curtains for you, Curt. Time to fall.”

The last thing Curt sees is Owen looming, hunched over and bleeding on him.

The last thing he hears is the sound of breaking glass.

* * *

PROLOGUE

_Russian Weapons Facility – 1961_

They both draw their guns at the same time.

“Time to take your final bow, Curt,” Owen says, quiet. They’ve come to the final stand-off. The scene is set.

Curt is panting. “My team is destroying your island facility as we speak.” He grins heroically, a born leading man. “Your surveillance network is fried! There’ll be no encore tonight… for you.”

Owen takes a step down, relaxes his stance, takes his gun off Curt. “Perhaps you’ve destroyed that island facility. But what of the others?”

“There’s more?” he asks, shock painting across his face. Childish.

Owen lets out a noise of contempt and speaks slowly to drive it home: “How does it feel to know you’ll never catch up with us?” He levels his gun back at Curt. Curt’s lowers in disbelief.

“It’s not too late to fix this. Uh, if y-you agree to,” Curt gestures, grasping at straws, “to give up Chimera I’m sure the Agency can pull some strings, to have you—”

Through this, Owen pinches the bridge of his nose to try and alleviate the intense exasperating pain of this proposal’s idiocy. Enough already.

“You still don’t see!” he roars. “Do you, Curt! There won’t _be_ an agency to go back to once this system is global. I’m going to single-handedly dismantle everything you’ve ever believed in.”

The triumph is sick and satisfying. He breathes heavily, his gun level with Curt’s eyes.

“We used to share those beliefs,” Curt says. Resolute. A man certain he’s on the right side. “Think of the missions we served. The lives we saved. The impact we had on this world.”

His fervour was contagious, once. Owen’s gun dips, but stays true. Curt continues:

“Together. Two of the greatest spies to ever live.” Ah, here’s the accusation. “Now you consider that, and you look me in the eyes and you tell me you don’t believe we’re making a difference!” And now the pleading. Doesn’t he ever get tired?

Owen shakes his head slightly. “The future is happening, Curt. And it’s not going to _wait_ for you. What use will one man be, when a box in a room can do his job in seconds?”

“Sounds boring.” And there it is, the old stand-by. Is that genuinely the level he functions on, or is it an attempt to pull at the necrotic strings of Owen’s heart? Owen huffs a reproachful laugh.

“You’re a caveman.” He spreads his hands in benediction. “And I’ve invented fire.”

Curt searches for words, finds only cliche. “I’ll stop you.”

“You’ll do your best. Once a spy, always a spy. I remember.” Owen chambers his gun. Curt turns away.

“Spies never die,” Owen chuckles. “A new world is awaiting us, Curt. A world without spies, a world without agencies, a world without secrets.”

“Some secrets aren’t yours to share,” Curt says, looking up at Owen, at his reckoning finally come, and stepping up to face him again. There’s sweat on his neck. “What about our secret?” he asks, and takes a step. “The time we shared. The feelings we had.” And another. “For each other.” The barrel of Owen’s gun is a foot from his chest now. “Are you ready to share that with the world?”

Owen isn’t shaken, but his hands don’t agree. His grip loosens on the pistol.

They stare at each other for long moments. Owen spares one last thought for the could-have-beens, then lays them to rest. He firms again, adjusts his grip to point the gun between Curt’s eyes.

“That secret died the night you left me for dead,” he says, quick and betrayed, the funeral’s lament.

It’s a fair cop. Curt nods, pained, looks away. “Clearly.”

Curt turns, looks into the distance. Nothing to see but the murk of the facility and the ghosts they left behind. Owen is tired of this.

“Here’s some advice, Curt. It’s called moving on.”

Curt steps away, his mouth working behind his clenched teeth.

“Do give it a try.”

Curt nods again. He’s decided something.

He spins, shoots. The gun flies from Owen’s hand, disappearing in the dark of the warehouse.

Owen’s exasperation and exhaustion gain a soupcon of sadness. He rubs at his eyebrow and spreads his hands, at a loss.

“You know, killing me won’t take the system offline, so. What are you doing?”

Curt’s gun is an inch from Owen’s forehead. The moonlight is bright and clear on his face.

“Taking your advice.”

This isn’t a love story.

Curt shoots.

_Click._

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings:  
> -physical violence  
> -subtext of self-harm, nothing explicit or even outright stated  
> -mentions of torture, violence against women, dismemberment, paralysis as a suppression technique, Nazis
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
